Review: Squatters O1: Down Under The Sink

The world of squatters is all over the news nowadays, especially if you’re like me and live in NYC-metro area. Essentially people just walk into your house, lock the door, and they are allowed to stay in there for as long as they want without paying rent or bills or anything claiming that they have “squatter’s rights”. Creator/writer Ben Kuhlmann explores this phenomenon with the first of three animated shorts as part of a series called Squatters.

In the premiere episode we’re introduced to Hollywood star Steve Keester who wants nothing more than to just head to his vacation home and relax when he runs into some jerk sleeping on his couch watching TV and eating all of the snacks. When Steve confronts this asshole, he chases him under the kitchen sink and into an alternate dimension where some sort of caveman-like aliens species appears to not really warm up to his welcome.

Ben Kuhlmann and Joe Taylor produce the animation for the series and if you would’ve told me there was a whole team behind them I would’ve believed you because the debut episode is very solid from a production standpoint. The show exhibits clear inspiration from the likes of Rick and Morty both in the premise of this week’s episode juxtaposed with the frenetic pace of a lot of your quarter-hours that you see up and down the lineup so Squatters could fit right in and I think it should. This episode I thought was very funny with silly dialogue and Steve’s a great lead character that I think a lot of people can get behind.

We’ve had a number of animated TV shows over the years go the “show about showbiz” route and I’ll be curious to see if Squatters can distance itself from the pack and not even really dwell on a lot of that background, but I’m liking what I’m seeing at the moment and I’m looking forward to seeing a few more of these shorts over the next couple of weeks.